Good morning. Heavily indebted investment-grade firms in Europe may find a particularly freewheeling buyer of their bonds in the European Central Bank, the WSJ’s Mike Bird reports. In March this year, the central bank announced its decision to buy eurozone corporate bonds, adding to its sovereign-bond buying program, which has been active since early 2015. But the plan raises the question of whether easy access to money will let companies put off making hard choices. And not all of the controls brought in to limit the large-scale purchases of sovereign bonds have translated onto the corporate stage.

For sovereign debt, the per-issue limit was set at 25%, meaning the ECB would buy no more than a quarter of any eligible bond. In March this year, the maximum share was increased to 33%. In corporate bonds, the initial issue limit is far higher, at 70% of any individual bond. What is more, the ECB has refrained from entering the primary sovereign-bond market, but no such restraint exists on the corporate-bond purchases. The ECB is planning to purchase company bonds in the primary market, since that is the only way that it can get its hands on significant volumes.

“To be sure, corporate QE could be a good thing for eurozone financing costs,” writes Mr. Bird. “What has been less widely discussed is whether it is a good thing for the primary recipients, and whether some of Europe’s relatively highly leveraged corporations need more excuses to issue debt.”

CFO JOURNAL TODAY

Johnson Controls spinoff will be a foreign entity.Adient, the auto seat maker that Johnson Controls Inc. plans to spin off, will be headquartered abroad, CFO Journal’s Richard Teitelbaum reports. The move comes on the heels of its disclosure that it plans to continue with its announced merger with Tyco International PLC in a corporate inversion.

THE WEEK AHEAD

U.S. and U.K. to release GDP: Fed and BOJ meet. This week, data releases from the U.S., U.K. and Japan will help give a read on where the global economy stands, and the Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan are meeting to set monetary policy. U.S. GDP is expected to be dismal, and the Federal Reserve is expected to keep interest rates unchanged after it meets on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Chipotle counters frightful results.Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. has warned it will post a loss because of its food-safety problems, but when it reports quarterly earnings Tuesday, investors will be looking for signs that freebies are winning back customers.

For Apple, the upside of worry. When Apple Inc. posts results for its fiscal second quarter Tuesday, it will be a first in some different ways. Revenue and iPhone unit sales are both expected to be down on a year-over-year basis. Apple hasn’t reported a drop in quarterly revenue in 13 years. The iPhone hasn’t posted a negative sales quarter since the smartphone was launched in 2007. But Apple is largely a victim of its own success. The iPhone 6 delivered such record-busting growth last year that its successor could hardly be expected to keep up.

Exxon runs low on fuel.Exxon Mobil Corp. generated plenty of headlines earlier this decade when it was posting quarterly profits in excess of $10 billion. But those records are a distant memory in the wake of oil’s price tumble. The company on Friday is projected to post its smallest quarterly earnings this century.

CORPORATE NEWS

A Pioneer Natural Resources facility in Texas last December. The company has boosted its hedges for 2017 in recent weeks to cover 50% of its oil production, up from 20%.​

Joyce Marshall/Star-Telegram/Associated Press

Oil producers lock in once-snubbed prices. U.S. oil producers aren’t letting the rally go to waste. In an about-face, they are using hedges to lock in prices that they turned their noses up at a few months ago.

Department stores need to close hundreds of sites, research firm says. U.S. department-store chains need to close hundreds of locations if they want to regain the productivity they had a decade ago, according to real-estate research firm Green Street Advisors. The real-estate research firm estimates that the closures could include roughly 800 department stores, or about a fifth of all anchor space in U.S. malls.

Why there are more consumer goods than ever: Facebook. The number of new packaged goods introduced each year has soared as a result of productivity gains and advances in manufacturing and supply-chain management, but now Facebook Inc. is driving the trend as well, writes the WSJ’s Christopher Mims. “No business exists without a market for its goods. And Facebook, more than search, more than word-of-mouth, and more than previous types of advertising, is an unprecedented way to generate that market.”

Airbus gains new financing ally in U.S.Airbus Group SE will open itself up to financing from an unlikely source when the first jet is delivered Monday from its new factory in Alabama: the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Building aircraft in the U.S. will allow some of the European plane maker’s customers to tap Ex-Im for the first time. Meanwhile, competitor Boeing Co. is ramping up its push into the spare parts business as part of a broad effort to cut costs and secure a new source of revenue even more lucrative than making aircraft.

Mystery on Wall Street: How P&G will deliver on cost cuts.Procter & Gamble Co.’s boss has promised investors $10 billion in belt-tightening, as the big consumer-goods company tries to adjust to a future of slower growth. Trouble is, analysts don’t know how he will get there. Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller said at the February meeting that P&G would be able to squeeze more out of its supply chain, and there was “room to improve” in trimming the $1.5 billion a year it is spending on advertising agencies.

Former Buffett heir-apparent now an activist investor. Ex-Berkshire Hathaway Inc. executive David Sokol says Middleburg Financial Corp. is too small to compete and would have more value as part of a larger bank. Mr. Sokol has been invested in the bank for nearly eight years and holds 30% of its stock.

Apple Watch reaches first anniversary with sizable sales but plenty of critics. Apple sold twice as many Watches as iPhones in each device’s debut year. The company doesn’t disclose sales, but analysts estimate about 12 million Watches were sold in the first year, compared with about six million iPhones in its first year. At an estimated average price of $500, the Watch is about a $6 billion business for Apple.

Uber reaches a tipping point with drivers.Uber Technologies Inc.’s settlement of a class-action suit opens the door to tipping the ride-hailing company’s drivers, but some customers might not want to pony up the cash. Tipping has been the norm for Uber’s main U.S. competitor, Lyft Inc., whose ride-hailing app allows riders to send drivers gratuities electronically via a prompt after the ride concludes.

Siemens to showcase its U.S. presence during Obama visit.Siemens AG CEO Joe Kaeser says the German company is well-positioned to help modernize U.S. industry through factory automation and the digitization of data for manufacturers. Siemens is a leader in the so-called Industrial Internet, a global effort to marry heavy industry with the Internet of Things—a concept in which cloud-connected devices all communicate. Among the things Siemens will showcase are the U.S. sporting-goods companies that use the Siemens’s product-management software.

Cybersecurity firm priced its IPO below expectations. Shares of SecureWorks Corp., the cybersecurity arm of Dell Inc., made their market debut Friday, ending four months without a technology initial public offering. Trading was choppy, with the shares initially opening below their IPO price before finally ending unchanged at $14 a share on the Nasdaq exchange. The company raised $112 million through the sale of eight million shares. It had initially targeted a sale of nine million shares at $15.50 to $17.50 each.

Lawyer takes aim at Volkswagen in Europe.A U.S. class-action attorney has launched a website to sign up disgruntled European customers, investors and other parties damaged by the Volkswagen AG emissions scandal.

Frontier fields customer complaints.Frontier Communications Corp. is facing a flurry of customer complaints after acquiring millions of phone, television and Internet accounts in three states from Verizon Communications Inc. this month. Most issues were fixed within hours, Frontier said, though some persisted as the company worked to properly handle the flood of new service workers who came over from Verizon.

NBC’s Olympic goals are high, despite hurdles in Rio. With a little more than 100 days to go before the start of the Rio Olympics, Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal is rolling out its largest marketing campaign ever for an event it hopes will set TV viewing records.

REGULATION

The Clearing House Association is a trade group of large U.S. banks, including the units of some big foreign banks. Here, New York’s Financial District.

Associated Press

U.S. banks’ new weapon: economists. As economists have gained power inside the Federal Reserve’s banking-supervision division, U.S. banks are pursuing a novel strategy to influence regulation: hire their own economists to demonstrate the impact of rules on their business.

Obama, Merkel urge action on Atlantic trade pact. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged action Sunday on the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, saying the window to strike a deal soon could close. Amid skepticism in the U.S. and criticism from both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, Mr. Obama touted what he called the “indisputable” benefits of international trade and called for completing the accord with Europe before the end of the year.

Long-term costs of cutting emissions grow hazy. The world’s top officials just signed an agreement to slow the buildup of planet-warming greenhouse-gas emissions. They have yet to grapple with the cost of implementing it. The economic costs of meeting near-term emissions targets are relatively modest. But long-run targets are far harder and infeasible with technology widely available today.

Microsoft and Google bury the regulatory hatchet. The two companies have agreed to withdraw regulatory complaints against one another globally, reports Bloomberg. In a statement Friday, Alphabet Inc.’s Google said the two companies preferred to compete on the merits of their products, “not in legal proceedings.” The relationship had already started to become more cordial with the two companies resolving a long-standing patent feud in September.

ECONOMY

Few traders expect the Fed to raise interest rates at this week’s meeting, which ends Wednesday, but investors will be watching for signs that a rate increase could be on the table at June’s meeting.

Britt Leckman/Planet Pix/Zuma Press

As bond yields rise, some investors fear another false dawn. Government-bond yields are heading higher around the world, a move typically linked to rising expectations of economic growth and inflation. But some investors worry the move will be short-lived, just like in recent years. In three of the last four years, bond prices have fallen sharply to start the year, only to surge later as economic and geopolitical concerns took over investors’ minds.

The Fed fights the tape over interest rates. Despite the Federal Reserve’s protests to the contrary, the market remains unconvinced a rate increase is coming, writes Justin Lahart for Heard on the Street. Three-quarters of the economists in The Wall Street Journal’s latest forecasting survey look for a June increase, but those trading futures obviously have different ideas.

Barrick Gold turns to new finance chief. Investors will get their first chance to size up a new finance chief at the world’s largest gold producer this week when Barrick Gold Corp. reports first-quarter earnings. Catherine Raw will be the company’s fourth CFO in five years. The Canadian miner is betting that Ms. Raw, who previously co-managed funds focused on the industry for BlackRock Inc., can streamline the company and place more emphasis on shareholder returns.

Content from our sponsorDeloitteCFO insight and analysis written and compiled by Deloitte

Implementing an enterprise risk management (ERM) program can enable federal CFOs to unify and improve their agency’s risk management capability. A comprehensive risk appetite framework can improve an agency’s ERM capabilities in multiple ways, such as helping senior leadership communicate the agency’s risk appetite throughout the organization, prioritizing risks and measuring whether the agency is staying within its risk appetite. Learn how CFOs can develop a risk appetite framework aligned to the agency’s mission and the amount of risk the agency is willing to tolerate to achieve its strategic goals and objectives.

Please note: The Wall Street Journal News Department was not involved in the creation of the content above.More from Deloitte →

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.